Escapism
by PepperF
Summary: Sappy AU. Sarah and Kyle take a break.


Sequel to 'Breaking The News' – set in an AU where the Terminator was destroyed when they blew up the tanker truck. This is pretty sappy. Feedback is welcomed, but I ain't so tough when it comes to flames. The Terminator, Kyle Reese, and John and Sarah Connor all belong to James Cameron. No infringement of copyright was intended; these characters are used without permission, and not for profit. 

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"This isn't safe."

Sarah rolled her eyes. It was always the same argument. "It's safe, Kyle."

Kyle looked unconvinced. "It... it doesn't look safe." He ducked his head, searching her eyes, trying to read the situation. At times like this, he usually followed her lead, but sometimes he took some convincing. Sarah tried to look reassuring and confident. "You're sure about this?"

"**Yes**, Kyle. It's safe, it's good, it's food – now can we **please** eat the hot dogs?"

Kyle shuffled down in his seat, moving closer to her. He'd approved of the movie theatre – dark, lots of places to hide – but was having a bit of trouble with the cuisine. "I just – I've gotta take care of you." His eyes dropped to her belly. She wasn't showing yet – not with clothes on, anyhow – but it wouldn't be long. His arms ached to hold her close. "Both of you."

Sarah melted, as she always did. He was just so sweet – well, when he wasn't a pain in the ass. She planted a kiss on his cheek. "The hot dog won't cause me or John any harm, I promise. Not even with all the mustard and onions. C'mon, Kyle – you'll love it, honestly. Just try a bite for me." She'd already explained that there was no actual dog in it, but he still mistrusted the highly-processed meat. They just didn't have food processing in his time. Sarah shied away from what he had told her about the food in his time – she didn't want to lose her appetite. Morning sickness was bad enough.

He sighed. "Okay. For you." There's no dog in hot dog, he reminded himself. It's just... other meat. Sarah hadn't actually known what went into hot dogs, but she was sure it wasn't dog. It was just a name. They didn't need to eat dogs in this time – they weren't starving. Not that it would matter if it was dog – he'd eaten worse. Food is fuel. We need to eat to survive. And it sure smelled good, even if it did look weird. No dog in it at all: Sarah said so. He took a huge bite. His eyes widened. Sarah grinned.

"See?" She smirked, and bit into her own hot dog. "Man, I've been craving one of these like you wouldn't believe. I don't know if it's a hormone thing or just a junk food thing, but I've been thinking about it all week." She snuggled closer to Kyle, dropping her head on his shoulder and staring at the screen without really seeing it. She'd planned this excursion carefully. Everything they did had to be executed with military precision, but she'd finally insisted that 'military precision' didn't necessarily equate to 'boring as all hell'. He'd never seen a movie, had only the vaguest idea what television was, and found the whole concept of a night out so beyond the scope of his experience that her heart had cracked just a little bit more for him. She thought back three months, remembering the motel where they'd first made love, where John had been created, and the little kitchenette where they'd sat and talked over nitroglycerin. She'd started to tell him about all the things she wanted to show him, once they'd finally got through that nightmare – but now she knew him better, the idea of taking Kyle Reese to Disneyland brought a wry, sad smile to her face. He was tense enough when she'd taken him to the amusement arcade: Disneyland might just kill him. She'd thought that maybe some of the simpler pleasures in life would be easier on the battle-scarred time fugitive, and so here they were. She'd decided against taking him to an action film, uncertain how he'd react to it. Horror was also a no-no for the time being, and she suspected that – like 99 percent of the male population – he just plain wouldn't be interested in watching a romantic film. She had eventually picked a comedy. So far, 'Police Academy' seemed fairly innocuous. She wasn't sure he was getting all the jokes, but there was enough in the timeless language of slapstick to catch his attention.

"We just sit here and stare at the screen?" asked Kyle, finishing the last of his hot dog and licking his fingers. Sarah caught that, and hid her smile.

"That's the idea," she said happily.

"For how long?"

"Until the movie ends." Or until Kyle ran out of patience. "It's about an hour and a half. I've got popcorn."

"D'you really think we'll need to sustain our energy over such a short time?"

"It's not fuel." She'd heard the 'food is fuel – eat to survive' talk from him once too often when the morning sickness was making eating impossible. "It's snacks. It's just a part of the experience." She grabbed the bucket from the seat next to her, and dropped it on his lap. He was more likely to stay put if he had something to do. Kyle took a kernel, happier now to go with the flow, and chewed thoughtfully.

"It's like... sugary cardboard."

"Uh-huh."

"Why do you people eat so much sugar? You don't need it." He was putting popcorn into his mouth absent-mindedly, though, despite his words.

Sarah shrugged. "It's addictive. We all know it rots our teeth and makes us fat, but we still do it. Just one of the problems of living in the twentieth century, I guess."

"Hmph." Kyle stared at the screen, but she could tell he wasn't really paying attention to it. His mind was elsewhere, lost in his own nightmare world – all too vivid for him, still, because it had been his life for so long. "I like your problems better."

She rubbed her cheek against his shoulder. Kyle moved his arm out and around her, pulling her close so that her head was resting in the hollow of his neck, and leaned his cheek against her hair. She felt a sigh go through him, and some of the tension left him, as it usually did when he was in physical contact with her.

She'd been reading a lot lately about war trauma, in an effort to understand what he might be going through. Sometimes he coped just fine with his strange new world, but sometimes the disparity between what he was experiencing and what he'd grown up to expect hit him hard. He was just about recovered from the physical wounds he'd incurred in their flight from the Terminator, but he was still constantly on edge, still slept for no more than an hour at a time. She'd somehow expected it to be over, once they'd defeated the killer machine – or at least for them to have a time when they could just stop running and catch their breath. But after the briefest of stays in hospital, he'd insisted that they disappear. They'd evaded the hospital and the police, and ran until he'd finally collapsed. That had been tough – caring for him, afraid for him, terrified that he'd die because she didn't have the knowledge to keep him alive, desperately wanting to take him to a hospital but knowing that he'd kill himself to escape, driving them on to some unknown and unknowable safe place. He had survived her nursing, though. He was tough. They'd stayed put for three weeks – the longest time he'd stayed in one place, he told her, heartbreakingly amazed – and she'd discovered that she was pregnant. It hadn't been a huge shock to her, even though – because of his injuries – they'd only then been together that once, at the first motel. She'd understood then that there wouldn't be anyone else – she didn't want to have a child with any other man. John had to be their son. So although it was a little sooner than she'd hoped, she hadn't been shocked.

Kyle had. She wondered at first just how he thought she'd get pregnant – had he thought she'd leave him? – but then it had struck her: he hadn't expected to survive. He'd volunteered for a one-way trip, to stop the Terminator – effectively a suicide mission. The idea that he would also be there to father the leader of the revolution – the very man who had sent him in the first place – well, she could only suppose that it was so unthinkably huge and complicated an idea, such a vast responsibility and honour, that it just hadn't occurred to him.

She wasn't sure how she felt about that – about being this great legendary figure. It wasn't those unimaginable future people who disturbed her – it was Kyle, who was right there, who saw her every day – was there when she forgot to collect her change in the supermarket, and when she burped, and when she had morning sickness, and when she cried over roadkill – and yet still sometimes gazed at her with that awestruck, wondering look. She'd tried to counter it by telling him that all those things that John knew – all those famous warrior skills – would all have to come from him. She knew nothing about fighting, so who better to teach her – to teach John? He'd looked monumentally daunted. Then he'd started putting together a training scheme. And so he'd come to accept his role in the future of humanity's last and greatest hope.

It was worrying Sarah, though. Had they changed anything? Could they change anything? Because she remembered – all too clearly – what Kyle had told her about John's father, before they knew it would be him: "He dies. Even before the war." He'd been so matter-of-fact; death was an everyday occurrence to Kyle, but it made Sarah's blood run cold to think about it. Had John known his father when he was a child? Kyle had never thought to ask his revered leader such a question. The war didn't start until 1997 – that left thirteen years unaccounted for – thirteen years in which neither of them had any idea whether Kyle would be around or not, leaving them both just as much in the dark as to their future as ever. And even if he was around for the first thirteen years of John's life, if the timeline was unchanging and it all happened like before, that still meant Kyle would die. He certainly wasn't around in 2029. But she just couldn't accept that. No, she had to believe they could change things – that they had already changed things – that the future was not set in stone, that they might avert the coming apocalypse, and that Kyle would be there with her, whatever came. She had to believe that, or she would just give in to despair.

Sarah shook off her gloomy thoughts, and remembered instead how she'd explained the concept of a movie to Kyle. "It's for fun – for entertainment. Like... like playing make-believe, you know?"

"Make-believe?"

She wondered sometimes if he wasn't pulling her leg. Surely, even in that unimaginably awful experience also known as Kyle's childhood, there had been a time when he'd played make-believe? She hazarded a guess. "When you were a kid, did you ever play at being a soldier?"

Kyle thought about it. "We used to practice shooting," he said, hesitantly.

"Right! Well, did you shoot at things that weren't really there – I mean, did you pretend you were shooting something else, like maybe a Terminator, when really you were just shooting a – a target or something?" Kyle nodded slowly, his eyes distant and terrible. "Well, this is sort of like that," she continued hurriedly. "Only the people on the screen won't be kids, and they'll be pretending lots of other stuff – they won't be pretending to be soldiers. They'll be pretending to be, uh," she glanced again at the listing, "cops in training. They'll pretend to get things wrong, I guess – things like that. It's supposed to be funny. And they'll have costumes and props and stuff like that, to make it look real. People record the pretending – the acting – and we watch the playback on a big screen." The movie experience in a nutshell, she thought wryly.

"Why?"

Sarah looked blankly at him for a moment. Why did people go to movies? It was just something she'd always accepted – she'd never thought to question the reasons. "It's... it's entertainment. I guess it's just a way of passing the time," she said, lamely.

"Oh." Kyle looked distinctly unimpressed. "And you really want to go do this?"

"Yes! Yes, I'd like to take you to the movies. I'd like to go on a date with you, and eat hot dogs, and have a good time – like normal people, for once. Can't we do that? Pretend we're normal people – just for one evening?"

Kyle had run a gentle hand down her hair, and she was shocked to find that she was suddenly on the brink of tears. Goddamn hormones. He'd looked into her eyes for a long time, and then nodded solemnly. "Okay. I guess we could do that." His lips quirked in one of his rare smiles. "It'd be good for morale."

And she'd laughed, and slapped him lightly on the shoulder, knowing by the loving glint in his eyes that he was teasing her.

She snuggled closer, listening to his strong, steady heartbeat and smiling at his absorption in the film. It wouldn't last – she'd give it another fifteen minutes at best until he was on the alert again, eyes restlessly searching for threats, body tensed to move, conscience stinging for having let his guard down, even for a moment... They probably weren't fated to see the end of this story. But for now, for this minute in time, Kyle Reese was relaxed, and Sarah Connor felt a warm glow at having given him a moment of escapism.

END.


End file.
